Wawayanda sounds off on natural gas power plant

Friday

Mar 15, 2013 at 2:00 AM

SLATE HILL - Wawayanda's Zoning Board of Appeals voted 4-1 Thursday night to give variances to a planned natural gas-fired power plant, after a contentious public hearing at which the project's opponents spoke passionately against it. "You're making a wrong decision," Pramilla Malick, of Westtown, said to the board after they voted. "You're going to rot in Hell for this. You're poisoning little children." Competitive Power Ventures was seeking, and got, waivers to build the plant's steam turbine generator building 102 feet tall and the combustion turbine building 113 feet tall; the town's usual limit is 65 feet. They also got a waiver of setback requirements for a substation being built on Dolson Avenue, on the border with the City of Middletown, as part of the project.

BY NATHAN BROWN

SLATE HILL — Wawayanda's Zoning Board of Appeals voted 4-1 Thursday night to give variances to a planned natural gas-fired power plant, after a contentious public hearing at which the project's opponents spoke passionately against it.

"You're making a wrong decision," Pramilla Malick, of Westtown, said to the board after they voted. "You're going to rot in Hell for this. You're poisoning little children."

Competitive Power Ventures was seeking, and got, waivers to build the plant's steam turbine generator building 102 feet tall and the combustion turbine building 113 feet tall; the town's usual limit is 65 feet. They also got a waiver of setback requirements for a substation being built on Dolson Avenue, on the border with the City of Middletown, as part of the project. The 650-megawatt plant, which would be built between Route 6 and Interstate 84 near the Pine Hill Cemetery, has been in the works for about five years. It already has many approvals it needs.

In often dramatic terms, opponents said they worried about the plant's effect on the environment and their community's quality of life and character. CPV would get gas from a compressor station being built in neighboring Minisink, a project that has generated fierce opposition there, and many of the compressor station's opponents came to speak against the gas plant.

"I, and others, have seen it for a long time as the head of a deadly snake — the Millenium Pipeline," said Randolph Hurst, of Slate Hill.

ZBA Chairman Richard Onorati replied to numerous speakers that the ZBA's job is to apply the law as to variances, not to decide on the project's merits. "We are talking about the request," he said. "We are not talking about the project."

Steve Remillard, vice president of CPV, said the project's environmental impact was already reviewed by the Planning Board, which approved its environmental review findings statement almost a year ago.

Next Wednesday, Middletown's ZBA will take up the substation. The Wawayanda Planning Board is holding a public hearing on the project on March 27.